Quotes About Ephemeral

We can, if we so choose, wander aimlessly over the continent of the arbitrary. Rootless as some winged seed blown about on a serendipitous spring breeze. Nonetheless, we can in the same breath deny that there is any such thing as coincidence. What's done is done, what's yet to be is clearly yet to be. In other words, sandwiched as we are between the everything that is behind us and the zero beyond us, ours is an ephemeral existence in which there is neither coincidence nor possibility.

People lose fifty million skin cells every day. The cells get scraped off and turn into invisible dust, and disappear into the air. Maybe we are nothing but skin cells as far as the world is concerned.

Like flowers scattered in a storm, man's life is one long farewell

On any given day, something can come along and steal our hearts. It may be any old thing: a rosebud, a lost cap, a favorite sweater from childhood, an old Gene Pitney record. A miscellany of trivia with no home to call their own. Lingering for two or three days, that something soon disappears, returning to the darkness. There are wells, deep wells, dug in our hearts. Birds fly over them. -from Pinball, 1973

We all die and disappear, but that's because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss.

It's like watching some rare exotic butterfly. Pleasant to watch, but you can't touch it, for as soon as you do, it dies, it's brilliance gone.

Each memory was now the shadow of a shadow of a shadow. The only thing that remained tangible to him was the sense of absence.

Things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that's all.

There can be no meaning in what will someday be lost. Passing glory is not true glory at all.

This life is nothing but a short, painful dream.

Act that way and slowly but surely I will fade away. All the dawns and all the twilights will rob me, piece by piece, of myself, and before long my very life will be shaved away completely - and I would end up nothing.

Beginnings are always like this. One minute everything exists, the next minute everything is lost.

Now that you've said hello, I'm afraid we move right into farewells. Hello, goodbye. Like flowers scattered in a storm, man's life is one long farewell, as they say

Champagne's completely useless, you know," he said. "The only good part is the moment you pop the cork.

La clase de chicas guapas que, por más tiempo que las mires, en cuanto apartas los ojos de ellas, ya no te acuerdas de qué cara tenían. En el mundo existe este tipo de belleza. Que es como los pomelos: indistinta.

Looking at her nails, Aomame had a strong sense of what a fragile, fleeting thing her own existance was. Something as simple as the shape of her fingernails: it had been decided without her.

While they're still alive, people can become ghosts.

perhaps our lives are merely decorative, expendable items, a burst of fleeting color and nothing more.

Era abbastanza bella, ma molto comune. Il tipo di ragazza che in un serial televisivo fa la parte dell'amica della protagonista, quella che va a bere qualcosa con lei al bar, e le chiede: «Cosa ti succede? Non mi sembri molto in forma di questi tempi.» Fa solo una breve apparizione e appena scompare dallo schermo nessuno si ricorda più che faccia avesse.

Time goes by so damn fast.

There we were, sitting quietly on the edge of the world, and no one could see us. I just wanted to stay this way forever. I knew that was impossible – our life here was just a momentary illusion, and someday reality would yank us back to the world we came from.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that's how we've got to live.

Vlinders zijn de meest vergankelijke, gracieuze schepsels ter wereld. Ze worden uit het niets geboren, verlangen stilletjes naar iets heel kleins en beperkts, om uiteindelijk weer als in het niets te verdwijnen.

But you can't ever live in the place you dream about, the town you long for. You can't go there, and I don't mean like Thomas Wolfe or whatever, I mean the moment you become conscious of your desire, and then fulfill it, it evaporates.